Bloodbuzz
by phfina
Summary: Chapter 7: You think that you have your concerns. And then ... you realize, too late, what you did have, but then it's all gone. And you can do nothing, except watch her die. And hold her. And love her. Helplessly.
1. Bella

**Story summary:** Being a 'vegetarian' vampire is easy, is it? No, it isn't. It's hard for every one of us. All the time. And some of us have other issues that make that choice ... difficult. Impossible, even. Just ask Bella.

**WARNING**: sad.

**Setting: **Batvia, Ohio, May 6th, 2010

* * *

I stood on a prominence overlooking the Harsha Lake, having just completed a hunt of a Virginia whitetail deer that gave a very satisfying run. The thrill of the chase in a hunt is a thrill that is difficult to top.

Except for when I was standing here, waiting for her.

And she did not leave me waiting long ... if you could discount the two weeks since I had last seen her.

"Rosalie," a quiet, musical alto voice sang my name.

I felt a cool, smooth hand very gently rest on my shoulder.

I kept looking out over the Harsha, but I couldn't stop the smile from pulling my lips upward.

"Bella," I said.

And I heard the smile in my voice, and I heard the love there, too. And the sadness.

Bella came to stand beside me, also looking out at the lake. Taking her in from the corner of my eye, she stunned me with her grace and her beauty.

And she looked utterly feral. Her long hair was tangled in knots, and twigs and leaves had ensnared themselves in the long waves of her hair. Her clothes were relatively new — a few days old, I judged — and probably booty from her most recent hunt. They had suffered from the elements, being repeatedly rained upon and sun-dried, and branches that were feather caresses to us has torn small holes here and there in the flannel and denim, giving her a soggy, bedraggled appearance.

And shoes?

Shoes don't last any length of time for nomadic vampires, so most of them didn't bother with shoes, as they were superfluous for us, anyway: we hurt the ground; the ground couldn't hurt us.

Bella wasn't a nomadic 'vampire' — she was, but she was also something so much more dangerous — so she also didn't bother with shoes.

But none of these things were important. The one feature of Bella that shone through, besides her godlike grace and beauty, were her eyes.

Bella's serene but vivid-red eyes looked over the lake. Yes, she had just hunted. I envied the poor fuck even as I pitied him. Dying in Bella Swan's arms? That'd be my definition of Heaven. And as the Denali sisters have said, 'What a way to go!'

I shook my head of the image stuck in my mind of Bella's last hunt. _She can't help herself,_ I reminded myself angrily. And she's here with me now. Even after all of this, she's still with me, and I'm still with her.

Like either of us had a choice in the matter.

She glanced over at me. "You look nice," she said, appreciatively.

I had dressed 'casually' in a Cookie Johnson ensemble from Neiman Marcus: a powder blue scoop neck tee and steel-grey colored "Grace" jeans, the style was "Love boyfriend," of all things, which means the bootcut was rolled up to expose the ankles. But then I did give in a little to myself and wore a pair of black Donald J. Pliner elastic platform sandals.

Not the most practical thing to be wearing on a hunt, so I took them off during the chase, then retrieved them and put them back on for this rendezvous. You see, Bella has a weakness for my toes. I painted the toenails red, just for her.

For you see, I have a weakness, too: for Bella.

"Thank you," I said.

After a second, Bella smiled, acknowledging my silence about her own bedraggled looks.

That hurt. I wish I could tell her a little white lie about her appearance, but one thing we promised to each other was that we would be truthful to each other, and I couldn't say she looked beautiful, because she looked a mess.

Another thing I promised myself: I would love her. Forever. No matter what. And her, beside me now, I was reminded of my promise, and how easy it was to keep.

"How have you been?" I asked.

Bella shrugged. "Same-old, same old," she said disinterestedly. Then she asked, "How about you and ... everybody?"

_God! _I shrieked in my head, _everyday we've been worried __sick__ about you, missing you, praying for you ... wanting you to __come __home__!_

But I didn't want that to set the tone of our short time together, because then we would be in a fight and that's what our time would be: two weeks apart with a fight in between followed by two more weeks apart? We only had a few short hours together. We couldn't afford to waste this precious time.

Bella and I had found this out, the hard way.

Several times. And the two of us getting into a screaming hissy fit with each other, and then Bella running away, disappearing for weeks and months? No. This visit was _not_ going to go like how some of the others had gone. I just had to watch my temper to make sure of that, and — _by God!_ — I _would_ for this visit.

Bella's visits with me are clandestine. Nobody knows where she's been or how or what she's been doing. Nobody knows that she's been following the coven as we move from place to place. And Bella wants to keep it this way. And I've honored her request.

As much as it pains me to do so.

So I settled for the compromising answer: "Fine." That stung as I said it, so I was forced to add the one truth tearing me up inside. "We miss you, Bella. We all do."

"Yeah," Bella said regretfully. It was her only acknowledgement.

And there was pain in her voice, because she knew, as much as her absence hurt me and her absence hurt everybody else — particularly one especially dear to her — she, wrongly, felt her presence would be would be much worse for us.

And there was nothing I could say to her to convince her otherwise.

I took her hand from my shoulder and kissed it lightly, smiling faintly.

"Would you like to get cleaned up?" I offered, waving toward the Harsha.

"What?" Bella asked in disbelief. "Did you actually bring scented bath oils or something?"

"Surprise!" I smiled with the delight of this small pleasure.

Bella smiled back, and it brought me right back to all our joyful and sorrowful times together, it brought me back to this very moment, as it also was joyful and sorrowful. Here we are, so happy to be together but already tasting the bitterness of the imminent separation.

She said, "A little skinny dipping, is it then?" Her smile turned wicked, "Well, there goes half the reason for you bringing the deck of cards like I asked you. Oh, well. But a bath in the lake does sound wonderful."

She quickly doffed her shirt and started to kick off her pants.

"Hey, slow-poke," she called, "last one in is a rotten egg."

That recalled me to myself, because I was openly staring that the perfection of her body. The way she so casually tossed off her shirt, revealing every elfin line and curve of her?

The thoughts I was thinking, of how my hands and tongue would caress every inch of her?

Criminal. And I would gladly plead 'guilty' to any and every charge leveled against me.

I'd probably offer some additional charges they missed.

But I pulled off my own sweater and folded it neatly, placing it on the picnic blanket, and started to remove my jeans.

Bella stopped in her shucking of her clothes and regarded me, a bit wall-eyed, in silence. She picked up her own discarded shirt and folded it a bit clumsily, as if she had never folded a shirt, as if she didn't know how.

How quickly she had lost every shred of civility! She had gone completely wild living in her nomadic ways in the forests, all alone, away from any contact of humanity ... except when she was hunting. Encountering my neatness? I saw the look of confusion in her eyes, as if it were now totally alien to her. She looked lost folding her own shirt.

I smiled encouragingly to her, and continued to disrobe.

Bella did the same, but more slowly now, more pensively.

I picked up the all-in-one bottle of philosophy grace shower/bath-soap.

"Bella?" I said seriously, looking at with all the love, hurt, and pain we had shared in our existence.

"Yeah?" Bella looked at me uncertainly.

"What was that about a 'rotten egg'?" I asked, and dove toward the Harsha with all my speed and strength.

Bella's shocked _"Why, you ...!"_ followed me as I plunged into the lake, and I laughed in the glee of my victory.

Who would have thought that Rosalie Lillian Hale would ever delight in play? Who would have thought it would take a cold-blooded murderer named Bella Swan to show me a tender side of me that I thought I didn't have?

...

Bathing Bella was always a delicate affair when she was human, and now, it was even more so, because we were both so shy with each other, shampooing our own hair, but soaping each other's bodies. It was a careful, gentle rediscovery of each other. Very intimate, but by a silent and mutual agreement, not an erotic, groping affair, but a tender moment, her for me, and me for her. Our hands delicately washed each other as our eyes remained locked on each other. I kept staring into the depths of her silver-crimson eyes.

I was afraid that I would lose Bella when she lost herself to her bloodlust when the _ardeur_ pulled her from my arms on a hunt we all disapproved of but couldn't stop. I was afraid that she would never come back to me or to herself. But, looking into her eyes, I saw the violence, the danger, but I saw something else: I saw her. I saw my Bella in the eyes of this killer, and it warmed my heart as it broke it to see her kindness, wit, and care for me.

Bella had murdered how many people these last three years? More than one hundred? More than double that? But she was still my Bella, and I still loved her, with my entire being.

Bella, the red-eyed murderer, smiled sweetly at me as she bathed me, and my heart broke again, even as it sang.

...

_"Ah!"_ Bella sighed, luxuriating in my care. "Do you know how long it's been? You wouldn't believe what a relief that bath was, Rosalie!"

I knelt behind my seated and towel-clad Bella, very gently and expertly combing her chocolate-brown locks, being very, very careful now: her hair wouldn't grow back like it did when I combed it for her when she was a human. I leaned in and whispered into her ear, "I'm glad you liked my surprise."

"Did I ever!" Bella readily concurred.

I resumed combing to hide my regret. We had just moved across the country to Ohio a few weeks ago and seeing my poor unkempt Bella on my last hunt — that is, my first Ohioan hunt — I knew exactly what she needed. So the last time she had had a proper bath was ... more than two months ago?

We civilized vampires could take a shower or bath every day, if we wanted to.

_You could, too, Bella, if you came back to us._

I forcefully pushed my regrets aside and worked to untangle her gnarled hair with very gentle strokes of the boxwood comb.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

[1] Okay, okay, _OKAY!_ Yes, m'dears, I know, okay? Yes, another story, another one-shot that's turned into a two-shot that's turned into this. I know, okay? Look, if you wish to file a complaint, talk to my Muse, okay? She's the one who put this image in my head and then stood over my shoulder, glowering and demanding I flesh out the rest of the story.

Do you know how my Muse stands over my shoulder? If you don't, then let me tell you: Damocles had it easy, okay? And if I even _think_ about writing anything else, like working on another story-in-progress? I put my life on the line writing _Sirens_ in the middle of writing this, because she gets all, _'what are you doing?'_ And that question is just filled with implications that I don't want even to think about (but I do: my Muse is a very, very creative daughter of Mνημοσύνη — Mnemosyné, "Memory" — and she delights in sharing images with me, be they frightful, sad, or ... um, well, you've read my _[fer realz] _one-shot _Prowling Panther,_ right?) And if I try to point out to her that these other incomplete stories were her ideas, too, she gets _The Look._ You do know _The Look,_ don't you, girls? If you don't, well, then, count yourself lucky is all I can say.

So here we are.

But, good news for you, dear readers: I've typed the first ten-thousand words, and I estimate that to be about seventy-five percent of this story, so this *ahem* "one-shot" story's chapter updates will come fast and furious (at most one per day, Ms. Muse is also very demanding that I publish impeccable chapters), and you will see this story marked "complete" and me returning to complete my other works-in-progress, okay?

Okay.

[2] Bloodbuzz (1), n.: the empty, agonizing longing brought on by _thirst,_ quenched as only human blood can, then, when quenched, that ecstasy so high that you're practically vibrating with pleasure. _Abstinence?_ _Vegetarian vampires?_ Phfheh! Admirable thought, but why? Besides, that's impossible, especially when in the grips of _ardeur, _no matter what those stupid Denali sisters say. Bella Swan, sadly, knows better.

I hint at what _ardeur_ is in my story _Monsters._

Bloodbuzz (2), n.: Song released by The National, a group based out of Cincinnati, Ohio a few days before this particular tryst between Bella and Rosalie occurred at East Fork State Park, Ohio. Bella may have been in a sbux a few days ago, eyes pitch black, on the hunt, and she may have heard this song playing then. Or she may not have. Anybody who would know that is very, very dead now.

[3] 'What a way to go!' is quoted by Irina in ch 5 (Succubi) of the story _Fair Game,_ by Eowyn77.

[4] And before you ask: yes, and no. Yes, I've written out this story, completely, in my head, so, yes, I know what's going on, and yes, Bella has struggled and lost against the pull of her bloodlust, over and over again. But no. No, I'm not sure if this is 'canon,' by which I mean I don't know if this is where the mass of my stories from the _Rose Read_ canon are tending to this story or if this story is stand-alone. This is three years in the future, m'dears, and it's a plausible future to my mind (and my Muse was just so delighted to share this image with me: Bella of the blood-red eyes standing over the incapacitated Rosalie and then ... _she_ comes out of the forest to see this tableau and cries out in anguish and then Bella ... but I won't spoil the ending of 'Chapter 1' of this 'two-part' 'one-shot' for you ... too much), but it's also plausible that Bella turns out all sweet and light and non-succubus-like and vegan as she does in _Breaking Dawn_ by Steph, right?

Right?

_Yeah, right!_

*ahem* Little bitchy sarcastic voice in my head? I have something to say to you: _Shush!_


	2. A Leaf Falls

**Chapter summary:** Why can't Bella just see that we love her, no matter what? Why can't she see we can help her more when she's with us than when she's not? Why can't love be enough? It's enough for me: I love her, no matter what. Why can't it be enough for her?

* * *

I kept at it until her hair was as smooth as silk, and kept at it some more, letting the comb caress Bella's back alternately with the back of my hand and the base of the comb and then on the next stroke with its teeth as the comb flowed down her long hair.

Bella was purring by the time I put the comb aside.

"That felt _soooo good, _Rosalie!" Bella's voice came from the heavenly bliss she was floating in.

"Do you want to experience something even better?" I asked in a sultry voice.

I kissed her on the shoulder. My lips lingered there for a second.

"No fair!" she panted. "You can't be kissing a sensitive spot like that!"

"Bella," I grinned, "your whole body is a sensitive spot!"

I felt Bella's smile. "True, true," she said thoughtfully.

"So, ..." I said, and leaned down to kiss her there again.

Bella so easily dipped her shoulder, twisted away from me, and at the same time pushed away from the ground with her fingers and hips. She landed in a sitting cross-legged position facing me on the other side of the blanket.

To watch Bella pirouette away from me was to watch poetry in motion. As a human, she was always making demands that her body couldn't fulfill, and that's why she was so clumsy. The creature she is now? She makes the same demands, but her body can cash those checks and still have plenty in the bank to spare.

I looked at Bella refixing her towel, catching a glimpse of that body of hers revealed by the parted towel.

Yes, indeed, _plenty_ there in the bank.

It's not like she had filled out as a vampire. The opposite, in fact: venom burns away some of the body fat. Bella was underweight as a human, so she was even smaller as a vampire, the soft lines of her face thinning a bit in her change, but the rest of her body was pretty much left alone, because there wasn't much to change, but what there was had become more defined. As a human, she had an uncertain outline to match the uncertainty of her demeanor. Now both had sharpened into more clearly defined lines.

Before, as a human, many people missed her beauty, as this girl-next-door was so easy to overlook. As a vampire, she kept her girl-next-door look, but now that girl-next-door was a head-turner. Bella was still the girl-next-door, it's just that now 'next door' was Beverly Hills or Miami Beach, right here in nowhere Ohio.

"Now, now!" Bella scolded me from across the blanket, wagging her finger at me playfully.

I raised my eyebrow, mystified. "Yes," I implored, "'now, now!' Right now, if you please!"

Bella rolled her eyes at me. "Oh, yeah, that's right; you are quite the nymphomaniac, aren't you, Rosalie?"

I snorted a laugh. "You're one to talk, Bella!"

"Well, I did learn from a master ... I mean, _mistress ..." _Bella chuckled playfully.

I smiled at Bella. "... And so?" I knew one day Bella would get the hint, but we didn't even have this whole day. Enough chit-chat; let's get to the _goods!_

_Naughty Bella_ was picking up what I was putting down, but she refused to play along.

"Nawt-anh, Rosalie Hale, and I'm shocked at you trying to get into my pants just as soon as you see me!" Bella cried with mock-anguish and -seriousness.

"Bella," I said, just as seriously, "you aren't wearing pants."

Her towel covered her upper body well enough, but it just barely covered her thighs, and her sitting crossed-legged like that? I glanced downward and got an eyeful.

_Stunning!_ was all I could think when I saw what the towel oh-so-poorly tried to cover. And, indeed, I was stunned, for I missed most of what she said in reply and had to replay the sensory data from my ears through my mind to get what she had said.

"And nor are you!" she countered. "I was gonna play you a game of strip poker, but that'd be the world's shortest game, given that all we're wearing is a towel each."

I blinked.

"Bella, I'm not wearing a towel." I wasn't, in fact, wearing anything.

_Whap! _

My vision was obstructed as my towel that had been by Bella's side hit me with the force of a car hitting a deer.

Bella cleared her throat as I removed the towel from my face.

_"As I was saying," _she dictated, then twirled her index finger, pointing downward in a sign for me _to put it on,_ "since both of us are now in just towels, strip poker would be no fun, so we'll have to play a different card game ... you did bring a deck of cards, right, Rose?"

I grumbled as I wrapped the towel about me.

"Yes, I brought the cards, but I don't much see the point, Bella," I complained. "Aren't we just delaying the inevitable?"

But I complied and fished out the deck of cards from the camping supply pack, tossing the sealed deck to her.

"The point, Rosalie," Bella said, tossing the deck right back to me, and commanding, "You shuffle'm. The point is ..."

Bella paused and smiled wistfully at me.

After a second she continued. "This is the longest conversation I've had with anybody in at least two years, sweetheart, and I'm having it with you. This is the first conversation I've had with anybody I've had in weeks, Rosalie. No, longer than that, because the last time we met, we basically jumped each other's bones ..."

I smiled back to Bella in sympathy and in understanding.

"... which was really nice, and I'm really looking forward to that, too, okay, Rose, but ..."

Her smile saddened, then she shrugged her shoulders.

"But I'm all alone, you know? And I just want to be with somebody, be with _you,_ mind-to-mind, and talk and hear somebody else's voice, or not talk and look into your eyes and not be lonely for just a little bit."

I wanted to exclaim, _'Oh, Bella!'_ and hug her to me just to wipe that forlorn look from her face, but I don't know if that would have offended her the way that would have offended me if anybody other than Bella did that to me.

So instead I offered an apologetic, "We did talk, and look, a bit the last time ... after."

Bella's smile was a grimace. "Yeah, Rose, but the sweet-nothing talk of post-coital bliss? Yeah, it's all nice and all, but it's really sad, 'cause we're both looking at leaving each other, so it's all just desperate _'I love you's._ That's not really a conversation to keep me going for weeks of solitude and hunting. No, it actually made the alone time worse, because I felt just so wretched!"

I grimaced, and the words were out. "So come home with me, Bella. After this, don't go out there into the solitude, but come back home with me, to family."

Bella sighed. "Yeah, and I'm sure this ..." — she waved her hand in front of her red eyes — "will go over really well with _Mommy_ and _Daddy_ Cullen."

That was the first time I had heard her tone turn sarcastic toward her family that she had estranged herself from.

"Bella," I said, disappointment creeping into my voice.

Bella looked away. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"Why did you just say that, honey? That was just so spiteful!"

I looked at Bella, pleading for her to look back at me, for us not to let this slip away.

"Bella," I said, "you know that isn't true."

"Isn't it?" Bella's eyes snapped back to me.

"Bella," I scolded again sadly.

Bella grimaced.

I pressed forward: "You know Carlisle has forgiven every one of our mistakes, or, in my case, deliberate acts. And, really, Bella, I don't hold a candle to what Edward did, and purposefully at that, and nor do you, and you know that, Bella. And we're all like that. You'll be welcomed back at any time with open arms, Bella; open arms."

"Yeah," Bella said, not agreeing. "There is a difference, though, in my case. You all made your mistakes or whatever, but you went back willing to give up something I just can't."

"'Can't'?" I repeated reproachfully.

"Can't," Bella affirmed.

"I don't believe that, Bella."

"Well," Bella said sadly, "that's 'cause you don't know what _it_ is like."

And that word — _'It' — _hung in the air between us.

Yes, _'it,'_ the _ardeur_ that drove Bella to kill and kill again. _'It,'_ the thing she claimed that made her so monstrous that the only good she could do for us was to leave us.

I looked across at Bella, wanting to communicate in that look that whatever _'it'_ was, it was never in the way of our love for her.

Bella looked back stonily, so lost in her despair, so unreachable in her _'it'-_ness.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

[1] Sneaking out this chapter during 'lunch break.' _Do not_ tell on me, please! And if you do, I work in the Batvia, Ohio sbux, and my name's Mary-Lewis Clark (:p some of you may get that eventually ...). A lot of pale people have been showing up at my sbux, as of late, I've noticed.

[2] This chapter is titled: "A Leaf Falls." This is from the concrete poem by e. e. cummings:

l(a

le  
af  
fa  
ll

s)  
one  
l

iness

This is Bella's existence. This is the existence of a nomadic vampire. This is what it is, to be existing on the fringe of society, looking in, sometimes, but never, ever being a part of. And that's true for someone in the forest of Batvia, Ohio, and that's true for someone living in the heart of NYC going to Ginger's Bar, cruising for chicas (but that's someone else's story, and in _Clubbing,_ at that).

This is loneliness.

A leaf falls.

[3] So, yes, seriously: this is a story about addiction. It is, after all, a vampire story. Ever notice that those who love the person with addiction, just love them, but the person loved is just so sure they are unloveable, hateful, in fact.

And there are three outcomes, right?

a. She's given up on and disappears into nothingness, never seen again, because Love doesn't have limits, but human beings do ... even vampires do; OR,

b. Her self-hate leads to her own destruction, and sometimes, oftentimes, pulls those who love her down with her, destroying them, too, because they don't let go. They love her too much to do that. They love her even more that they love themselves. And they get destroyed ... because they love her (I'm just saying what I've seen happens; I didn't say life is fair); OR,

c. She wakes up one day, and actually succeeds in getting off it, letting go of the self-hate, and _poof_ she's back, and loved, and loving, and functional, and not destructive to self and others. And, really, it happens just like that. Magically. All of a sudden. For no reason. And it doesn't come from anyone else, this salvation, it comes from her, just choosing to let go and to live.

Yes. I've seen all three happen. To myself, too.

This story ... well, what do you think is going to happen? What happens ITRW ('in the real world')? Not fantasy. Not, 'aw, how sweet!' But what really happens, all the time? Even after going to Twelve Step and Rehab and everything, what really happens?

This story is marked as 'Tragedy/Family,' btw. Just so you know.

en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Tragedy


	3. It

**Chapter Summary:** Ever notice that the harder you try to convince somebody of something, you know, to save them, the harder they fight to destroy themselves? Ever notice how I never let anything go? Yes, this was turning out to be such a lovely visit with Bella.

* * *

We had found that Bella was one of the rare ones. When Irina told the horrifying way succubae are created, she did hint that it was possible for one to auto-originate, after all, the succubae began with Lilith, and she was the first of the first: she had no creator except the Creator.

How I laughed at Irina: _'Lilith'?_ I mean: _please!_ Why not sit around a campfire and tell each other ghost stories? But then Irina pointed out that only a succubus could choose to create a succubus, and so where was the first?

I didn't have an answer for that. And now I do: I have my answer, because I have my own Lilith. Her name is Bella Swan.

Self-created succubae: first Lilith, and now Bella.

Bella, the succubus.

The signs were there when she was a human. People were just instantly fascinated with her and kept falling in love with her, wherever she went. She had no lack for suitors at Forks High School, including Edward, and then she steals my heart ... something I was sure was safe from everybody. And then off to Dartmouth College and she gets propositioned more than I do, even from the faculty.

If I had my eyes opened more than just to look with jealousy, I would have been able to put the pieces together, so that when she was turned, I would have been able to know that she would be more than the handful that a newborn vampire was.

But her ways didn't make it easy to tease this out of the circumstances surrounding her. It wasn't as if she was activity encouraging these longings by everybody. Quite the opposite, in fact, and that, in itself should have been a huge clue. People were falling over themselves for her, and she wasn't doing anything to encourage it.

Bella Swan was a newborn succubus, and she was more than just a 'handful.' No, she was insatiable and unstoppable.

Do you know what 'insatiable' means, by the way?

It means this: I wasn't enough for her. Her _ardeur_ drained me completely, and still, that newborn Bella, she hungered for more, so she went out hunting for more, and she went into the arms of men to feed her hunger.

Human men.

The swath of destruction would have been inescapably noticeable, if Bella had rooted herself to one place.

So she left us.

She left me.

And she left her baby in my arms, and she didn't look back.

But Bella wasn't only 'just' a newborn succubus. She had, like Kate, power over and above that, for the Volturi came looking to check up on the newborn. And when they came to our house, seeing us empty-handed, they put Dimitri on the job of finding her.

Dimitri can locate any vampire, even if it's on the other side of the world.

And it would have been funny, watching Dimitri, appearing as if he were tasting the very air, looking for Bella, then a look crossed his face that his comrades probably had never seen: Dimitri looked confused and ... _hesitant._

He set off in the forest, looking for her.

A couple of weeks later, he returned, and you could see the shame almost dripping off him when he asked to convey a message of invitation to Volterra to Bella the next time we saw her.

It would have been funny, looking at the almighty Volturi so flummoxed by a little just-out-of-her-teens newborn, if we weren't as concerned as we were. Would I ever see Bella again? I couldn't laugh at the Volturi because I was so consumed by my own worry.

But then Love — cruel Love — didn't allow her stay away. For a couple of weeks after the Dimitri incident, I was hunting alone, I got the feeling of being hunted myself, and ...

And needless to say, we've been playing this game of hide and seek with each other for almost three years now, clandestinely trysting, existing in this agony of separation, particularly when we have these brief, fleeting moments together, each rendezvous more painful than the last, but not so painful that we break it off all together. I can't imagine not seeing Bella ever again.

And the haunted look in her eyes when she looks at me? Or when she speaks of Ren? I know Bella feels the same way.

We're both trapped, and by Love, at that.

_'And they lived happily ever after.'_

This is our happily ever after, and it's the saddest, cruelest fate in the world. One I deserve, for the life and death I have lead, but one I had dreaded giving to Bella, ...

And that's exactly what I did.

So I kept trying, desperately, to fix it. To make right what I had wrought so wrongly.

Bella had just told me that there was no way I could understand what _it — _her _ardeur_ — was like. But there were those who did know and exist with this thing. So I reached out across this gulf, the well of loneliness Bella had forced herself into. I reached out to my Bella.

"You're right, Bella, I don't know what it's like, but the Denali sisters do. They can help. Talk to them. Please, Bella."

Bella sighed. "Yeah, because last time they helped _so much."_

"Bella, you were a newborn then, it's been a few years, maybe now you can ..."

Bella held up her hand. "Please, Rose, can we just drop this? It just can't work, okay? We tried, but I'm just not ..."

I interrupted the self-defeatist talk quickly: "We can try again, Bella. We can make it work, honey, I know we can."

Bella snorted then asked disbelievingly, "How?"

"Be my lover, Bella," I said.

Bella looked at me reproachfully. I could see my words stung her.

"I am, Rose, you know that," she said, hurt. "I love you."

"No, Bella," I clarified. "Have _only me_ as your lover."

Bella tsked. "You know that it doesn't work that way. When Laurent was with Irina she still needed to satisfy her _ardeur_ with other men from time to time. They tried a monogamous relationship, but he didn't last for very long, and as soon as that happens for us, then that's as soon as I'm in a man's arms and I take what I need from him, he's going to drop onto me and my teeth are going to sink into his neck and I'm going to drain him dry, there's no two ways about it, Rosalie. I mean, I could say I try not to, but I can't even make myself try, the _ardeur_ is that strong. I'm sorry, Rose, and it kills me to say this, but you're not enough, and then I have to go out, and when that happens we have bodies to hide."

"Okay, Bella, so you have to go out and ... _satisfy_ your need elsewhere," I grimaced as I said this. "But you are missing one fact and that is, okay, the Denali sisters have to go out, but they don't kill their prey anymore. You can make this work."

Bella shook her head sadly. "No, Rose, it's _you_ who's missing a big fact. How many centuries did it take them to be able to reach that level of control?"

I frowned. It was eight centuries, but "Bella," I said forcefully, "Carlisle started right away, and, look at me, I've never drank human blood, you can ..."

_"Rosalie,"_ Bella shouted, _"you're both just vampires!"_

Bella looked at me sadly and held out both arms in supplication. "You're both just vampires, but me? I'm ... look at me, Rosalie, this is what I am, this is what I'm stuck with, and I'm doing the best I can, but I can't be this wonderful, great, perfect vampire or succubus that you all want me to be. I wanted to, but I just can't, okay? I'm stuck with this hand, and I've got to play it, okay?"

I shook my head angrily. "No, Bella, we can ..."

"Rosalie Hale," Bella said quietly, almost meekly.

She looked at me, utterly lost and begged, "Do you love me?"

I pressed my lips together, and I stared at Bella as I breathed in-then-out, in-then-out.

"Yes, Bella," I finally said, "I love you. I love you with everything I am."

"Then don't try to change me into something I can't be, okay? I can't live up to everybody's expectations. I want to, but I just can't, okay?"

"Bella, I'm not trying to change you into something you can't be, I'm trying to help you to be something you already ..."

Bella raised her finger to her lips.

"Sh-sh-sh" she sighed softly, almost singing it. "Sh, Rosalie, sh. Please, sh. I can't take any more of your hope, and I'm just gonna have to leave if we can't just even agree to disagree."

I sat for a moment, looking at Bella, then I reached out my hand to her. She looked at me sadly and put her hand in mine. I gripped her hand tightly, so tightly that when she was a human her hand would have been mush, and closed my eyes.

After a moment I reopened my eyes and looked at her.

"Okay," I said, "but can I tell you a story about a girl who saw in me more than the black pit of despair I was stewing in and hoped me out of the hell I had cast myself into? And who told me I wasn't evil, but good, and kept believing that until it became true?"

Bella's lips twitched upward sadly. "Do I know her?" she asked quietly.

My smile answered hers. "Bella, I'm holding her hand," I said.

Bella looked away, taking her hand back. "Yeah," she said despondently.

But then she looked back at me, took my hand in hers, brought it to her lips and kissed it, then she returned my hand to my lap.

"Thanks for believing me back then," she said.

"You can believe me, now, too, Bella," I offered.

Bella looked away again. "Yeah," she said, not a shred of belief in her voice.

I sighed. Bella sighed at the same time.

Bella peeked at me and smiled.

I muttered angrily: "Couldn't we have just jumped each others bones, as you say, and skipped all this _lovely_ conversation?"

My mood was definitely killed. Bella's looked doubly-killed.

Bella looked back at me thoughtfully for a moment and then patted the blanket right beside her, saying a gentle, "Hey, c'mer you!"

I scooted over to her. She put her hands on my shoulders, and looked me in the eye.

"Thanks for trying, and not giving up on me." She looked away and swallowed, then looked back to me: "You're the only one left who cares about me, you know? You're my only connection to the whole world."

"Bella," I said, "There are so many others; you just have to open yourself up more to ..."

"Sh," Bella said softly.

I shushed.

"I love you, Rose, you know that?" Bella asked.

I nodded _yes_ once. "Yes, Bella, I know."

She looked at me. "Do you still love me?"

"Yes, Bella," I said quietly. "I still and always love you."

"Thank you," Bella breathed out.

Then she pulled me to her, kissed me on the forehead and then wrapped her arms around me for a long embrace.

It was awkward: our knees were touching and the most contact we had was our heads and necks, our towels hanging loosely, suggesting so much of what neither of us were getting to right now.

Sad, that hug was, and awkward, and frustrating.

... and sad. It was a wistful hug.

But her smile as she pulled away was even sadder; it was heartbreaking.

But it was all we had: each other.

And that wasn't enough.

* * *

**Chapter end notes:**

[1] Yeah. Bummer.

[2] Okay, real end note: Lilith is from archaic tradition. It was said she was created before Eve as an equal to Adam, and things ... didn't work out. "Why should I submit to Adam? I'm smarter than him!" So God cursed her, taking away her life, and she wandered in darkness, not producing children but preying upon the children of Adam and Eve. The 'children' of Lilith were known as demonesses and succubae, stealing the life away from men as God had stolen hers. It was said that she was in the Jewish creation story (and also in other creation stories of that time and locale), but the writers of Genesis didn't like her all that much, so those verses were excised. That's what's said; I'm just the messenger, you know?

[3] The Denali sisters are the oldest abstaining coven of vampires/succubae, abstaining for two-hundred years. AND Tanya, Kate, and Irina are one thousand years old. That means for eight hundred years, they have been having their way with men, and then murdering them. They tell their history in _Monsters_ (yes, m'dears, in the upcoming chapters of that story I have yet to write).


	4. Go Fish!

**Chapter Summary:** "Do you have a six?" I asked. Bella nearly glowed with pleasure as she handed me the card: "Yes! Go fish!" I got the card; so why do I have to go fish? Wait. It's upside down, and there are too many clubs on this card. ... Oh, no!

* * *

After a moment I shook my head and grimaced.

"What?" Bella asked.

"This rendezvous had started so promisingly," I complained, "and I promised myself I wouldn't try to push you, but here we are."

I shrugged my shoulders sadly.

Bella offered consolingly: "You can't blame yourself for trying."

"I can, too," I snapped back, "and now I've spoilt the whole visit!"

And I was _so_ looking forward to our tryst, and now it looked like no sex with Bella for me for at least another two weeks. _Damn it!_

Bella smiled and shrugged. "The visit isn't over yet. Why don't we just cool off from all the heaviness?"

"And do what?" I asked, masking my sense of helplessness.

Conversations just seemed to devolve into this thing we couldn't get over: I wanted Bella back home, and Bella just couldn't see herself as anything other than being alone.

Bella pointed down to the sealed deck of cards in my hand. "Play cards?"

I smiled at Bella. I broke the seal and passed her the deck.

"Okay, ... whist?" I asked, agreeing easily.

"Nah," Bella said.

"What then?"

Bella smiled a private smile and shrugged.

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn't help smiling back.

Bella was right: doing a trivial thing like deciding on a game of cards did lighten the mood.

"Okay, then, Miss Mysterious, you shuffle, then." I handed Bella the deck as I said this.

Bella smiled, taking the deck, and then, shuffled the cards, expertly.

It was a joy watching the ease doing something that she would have blundered through as a human. Bella was right, here, too: she was an alien in her human body, as a vampire, or succubus, she fit easily in her frame. She was finally comfortable being what apparently she was meant to be. Watching something as simple as Bella shuffling a deck of cards and seeing the _rightness_ of her doing it as she is now gave a really strong argument _pro predestination._

Bella offered me the deck to cut, which I did, then she dealt five cards to each of us.

"Which game?" I asked. I thought we weren't playing poker.

"Go fish!" Bella smirked and put the deck between us.

I couldn't repress a quiet laugh. "'Go Fish'? Seriously?"

"Yes," Bella said, lightly, smiling happily, "seriously!"

I shook my head, smiling. A 'serious' game of Go Fish. Only Bella would want to play a 'serious' game of Go Fish.

I wonder if that will be the constant in our eternal relationship: her delightful surprises, even in the saddest of moments.

"And, well, five cards? So we aren't doing the full set, just pairs?" I asked in clarification.

We didn't have any wager on the game, but I had to make sure the rules were clear from the get-go.

"Yep," Bella said easily, "just pairs."

"And what's riding on this game?" I demanded.

Bella blinked in surprise, but then her look became crafty for her, which means she looked transparently silly.

"Oh, nothing, nothing," Bella sang in mock innocence.

"Bella ..." I warned.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Oh, please, Rose, just go, huh?"

I looked down at my cards, and looked back up at her. "What if I want to put a wager on the game?"

Bella's eyebrows drew together. "Like what?" she asked curiously.

I looked down at my cards again. I had a pair of deuces already.

"Like," I said, "if I win this hand ..." then I paused.

Bella's look became concerned.

I pressed forward, "... you come home with me."

Bella's blow clouded with anger, so I added quickly, "Just for a visit, you know, Bella? Just to say hello to ... everybody."

Bella shook her head. "'Just for a visit,' huh, Rosalie? We know where that will go: 'Oh, Bella, now that you're here, and we have a room set aside all for you and and stay as long as you like as long as that's forever!'"

Bella growled angrily.

"No, Bella, it's not like that!" I defended, knowing full well that was what it would exactly be like — Esme would be unstoppable, being simultaneously torn between hugging Bella and not letting her go and totally destroying my room in her zeal to recreate it as our conjugal room — and I couldn't help thinking a bit spitefully at the thought of Bella staying: _and that's bad because ...?_

"Yeah, right!" Bella snarled sarcastically.

"Bella, just a visit! Please!" I begged.

"Rosalie," Bella sighed, "drop it."

"Or else?" I asked, but then my breath hitched.

Bella folded her cards into her hand. "Or I drop these cards, right now, get up from this blanket, leave, and don't come back until we can have a conversation that's not loaded with all this pleading-clinging shit!"

Bella glared at me.

She had just delivered her ultimatum, and her look now? She looked serious, ... serious enough to make good on it.

But Rosalie Hale never backs down from anything.

Even losing Bella now, and possibly forever?

I dropped my eyes. I felt sick. I had just put Bella up to something, and Bella had just stood up to me, and, here I was backing down.

As I've always done.

_God damn it!_

Looking at my entire existence, this was the pattern, I would stand up for something, somebody would shoot it down, and instead of saying, 'to hell with you all, I'm going to stand by this, no matter what you say or do!' I would just say 'to hell with you all, go ahead and shoot me down.'

I realized, right now, right in this moment that I wasn't righteous at all, as I had seen myself. I realized, instead, that I was a sniveling little whiner, who always absolved herself of all consequences by saying 'Well, I did say ...' but who never took an unassailable stand for what she believed.

I just realized something about myself. I'm a sell-out. I sell out on my convictions, and not just now, but all the time. Every time.

Rosalie Hale, the sell-out.

The taste in my mouth was bitter.

So, now I had a choice. I really could spoil the rest of the visit by whining about not getting my way and being a _petulant_ _bitch_ about it.

Or I could back down, admit defeat, but at least try to do it gracefully.

Hard choice? Obviously not. Except that I had never chosen this before. I felt a piece of me die as I whispered, "Okay."

I looked at Bella's glaring, furious eyes.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," I said softly, then looked away. I looked back at her. "Did you still want to play?"

There was a hardness to Bella's eyes, a distrust. She still glared at me critically, then she came to a decision.

"Okay," she agreed, then clarified: "No bet on this hand, right?"

I nodded solemnly in confirmation.

Bella gave me one more hard look. We were on thin ice. Then her eyes softened, and she whispered gently, "Go ahead first, Rosalie."

I looked down at my hand. "Do you have a king?"

Bella smiled in forgiveness and pleasure, "Yep," she said, passing over the king, getting into the game.

She nodded to me to go again. "Do you have a six?" I asked.

"Nope, go fish," Bella said. She frowned in thought or disappointment.

I drew a card.

She looked at her hand.

"So," she asked, "how is everybody?"

"Fine," I said noncommittally.

If she wanted more, she'd have to ask more.

She sighed. "Do you have a four?"

I shook my head. "No, go fish."

She drew a card.

"Do you have a queen?" I asked.

Bella smiled slightly and passed me the queen of hearts. I rolled my eyes and she stuck her tongue out at me.

I chuckled lightly then asked if she had a jack. She pointed to the deck. "Go fish," she said.

She looked at her cards again.

This was a totally superfluous motion. She knew what cards she had. She was using this very human gesture to mask her obvious inner dialogue.

Eventually she asked, "How is Renesmee doing?"

"Oh, Bella, ..." I began, then paused, considering how to describe Ren, "She's just ... amazing! So beautiful!"

Then I stopped in embarrassment. "I mean ... well, she's ... maturing quickly, you know, so her physical age is twelve and ..."

"Twelve?" Bella gasped.

"Yes, and she is so, so smart, and sometimes she comes off a bit ... rebellious? But she is just so ..." I smiled with pride. Yes, that's how to describe her: "You'd be just so proud of her, Bella."

"Do you have an eight?" she asked out of the blue.

"Excuse me?" I asked.

Bella glanced down at my hand. "Oh," I recollected myself. I didn't need to look down at my hand, unlike Bella. "No, go fish."

Bella drew from the deck and then laughed. She showed me her draw, it was an eight.

"So," she continued, pleased, "do you have a ten?"

"Nope, not one of those either, try your luck again, Bella," I responded, smiling myself at Bella's pleasure in the luck of her draw.

Bella drew, then shook her head.

I asked for a seven, and fishing didn't give me one, either.

"So," Bella asked quietly, "does she miss me?"

I closed my eyes for a second. "Always, Bella, always." I whispered fervently. "How could she not miss her own mother?"

"You're her mother, too, Rose," Bella chided.

"Bella," I sighed, "you know what I mean! She fed at your breast; you can't break an attachment like that! She misses her birth mother. She misses you."

"Does she even remember me?" Bella snorted disbelievingly.

"Yes," I said, "she is a vampire, so she has perfect memory."

"And a heartbeat," Bella countered.

"Yes," I confirmed.

"And she's growing so fast," she added.

I nodded.

"So, any ideas about ... well, what will happen with her?" Bella tried to mask her concern, but she didn't mask it very well. "I mean," she continued, "a twelve year old body in three years? What if she just burns her body out by the time she's twenty-four? What if she's not immortal?"

I shrugged. "Carlisle did note that her growth was rapid but decelerating; he thinks she'll stop growing around seven actual years."

"And then what?" Bella asked.

I tried to smile reassuringly, but all I could offer was, "We don't know."

Bella nodded, thinking.

I tried to look right into her, but I had pressed too hard already. She knew Ren's time might be only a few more short years, me using this after all my other failed attempts to coerce Bella to come home? This was a drawn game, and we weren't even playing chess.

"Do you have a three?" she asked after a quiet pause, and then was pleased when I passed her the card.

"How about an ace?" she said.

"Wow, Bella, you are having quite the run!" I exclaimed and passed her that card, too.

"Yep, so you'll pass me a five, then, right?" Bella said confidently.

I smiled and shook my head.

Bella drew from deck and looked up at me waiting.

The next few rounds had no luck for either us, and the cards in our hands grew.

"You say she misses me?" Bella asked.

"Yes," I said, "she thinks about you all the time."

"When was the last time she asked about me?" Bella asked quietly.

I looked down at my hand. It had actually been over a year.

"And she thinks about me?" Bella accused into my silence.

"Bella," I sighed, "if the answers to the questions are always the same, you can't blame her for giving up on them, can you?"

Then I parroted Ren's questions to me and my answers: "'Mom, when's Mommy coming home?' 'I don't know.' 'Why she staying away from us?' 'I don't know.' 'Is it because she doesn't love me?'"

At that question Bella shook a little bit in her seated position.

I continued sympathetically: "'Of course she loves you.' 'But then why isn't she here?' 'I don't know.'"

"Bella," I said, looking at the girl/woman/mother so hurt as the words sunk into her, "a little girl, three years old, no matter her physical maturity and amazing mental toughness and capacity can only take so many 'I don't knows' so many times before she gives up."

"So she's given up on me?" Bella asked, and I didn't know in her despair if I heard a hope that Ren had actually done just that.

"Bella, no!" I said forcefully. "Ren will _never_ give up on you! She _loves_ you!"

Bella's eyebrows came together. "'Ren'?"

"Oh, yes," I said surprised, realizing that Bella wasn't familiar with her daughter's ways anymore, "that's what she's called now."

"By who?" Bella demanded.

I chuckled. Bella becoming an immortal hadn't improved her vocabulary any, 'By who,' indeed. English grammar teachers all over the world would be tsking in disappointment if they had heard her. I was sorely tempted to answer, 'by she,' but that would be just too deliciously naughty. So, instead I answered with the simple, "by herself."

"Hmmphf," Bella snorted with displeasure.

Bella was so funny about these things: she couldn't stand the name 'Isabella' for herself, calling herself by the nickname 'Bella' so much so that people thought that was her actual name, but for her daughter she could not abide nicknames, always addressing her as 'Renesmee' no matter what anybody else called her. And a girl with the name of 'Renesmee' was almost guaranteed to have a nickname.

But not from her very stiff and proper mother ... named 'Bella.'

I wonder how Bella's 'absolutely no nicknames' policy for her daughter would stand against the defiance from her very own daughter.

I couldn't wait to see that confrontation.

Even for the simple reason of seeing Bella and Ren together. They both would be so, so happy in that reunion, if Bella ever got over her own shame enough to allow it.

I set my ruminations aside as our game continued. It ebbed and flowed. Bella seemed just as happy when I won a pair as when she did, and seemed just as sad when I guessed wrong as when she had to draw from the deck.

Bella was Bella: always Bella. She cared for herself less and couldn't care about her own happiness. I think she would be happier if I won the game or just as happy if I were happy doing something with her, no matter the outcome.

Strangely, I felt similarly. I was just glad to be with Bella, doing something as inane as playing a silly card game. Just being with Bella: that was the thing, and I was entirely with her, making pairs, drawing from the deck, ... looking at her, her brows drawn together in concentration, trying to guess what cards my hand had by staring intensely at her own hand. Bella couldn't read my mind to see what cards I was holding.

After all, Bella wasn't Edward, thank God!

We were down to just a couple of cards in our hands, the game was pretty evenly matched despite the wild swings in fortune to either player. I looked across to Bella.

"Do you have a six?" I guessed.

Her face could not mask the undisguised joy that burst forth from her like rays of the sun.

"Yes," she was absolutely glowing as she passed the card to me, then she nearly squealed with delight: "go fish!"

I took the card in utter confusion at the complete _non sequitur _of her conflicting statements. She had my card, but I had to go fish? I looked down at the card. She had handed it to me upside down, so I flipped it over. It was still upside down.

Then I counted the clubs on the card face, and burst out a surprised, "But Bella, this card isn't a six, it's a ..."

Then I put two and two together, putting her card next to my six.

And gasped an "Oh, no!"

Bella's face had transformed into one of delighted innocence to one of wanton lust.

"Oh, yes, Rose!" she purred and pounced.

She slammed, hard, into me, and we crashed onto the blanket. Cards flew everywhere.

"Oh, yes!" she snarled and her lips crashed into mine.

I saw the six in my hand fluttered down onto the ground next to the nine from hers.

Bella's need didn't let me see any more cards after that.

* * *

**Chapter end notes:**

[1] I _like_ playing Go Fish, you know? It can be so much more fun than truth or dare or ... *ahem* certain kinds of poker. I found that out from one of my ... _eheh-eheh-eheh .._. well, um, somebody reading this may have a bit of a ... feeling of synchronicity, so I ask her: have you been been a good girl and doing your school work? Hm? *evil grin*

But then I have to be a very, very good girl when my nieces want to play that game with me when I'm babysitting, you know? "Do you have a six, Aunt Mel?" Me, looking down at my nine, blushing: "Um."

*blush*

[2] The next chapter, does it have smexing? Of course not! This is a 'T'-rated fic, after all, so I'll just pull a fade-to-black like Steph did in _Breaking Dawn, _and get right back in what you love to read from me: angst. I mean, anyway, who needs to have that yucky, gross smexin' when you can have your fill with all that sad, despairing angstin' that I'm so good at wr-...

Um, girls ... um, just kidding, okay? Now, put down those pitchforks and torches. Um, girls, um ... _WHAT'S BEHIND YOU?_

'phfina scampers off to the forest in a quick getaway from the crazed mob of readers.

[3] Okay, I'm back [checking to make sure the torches are extinguished and the pitchforks are stowed]. I have a question for you. Rosalie was embarrassed to describe Renesmee as beautiful. Why? I mean: what would ever embarrass the great Rosalie Lillian Hale? Hm.

_[ooh, 'phfina! You're so mysterious! *readers roll eyes*]_


	5. Ardeur

**Chapter Summary: **Do you know what it is to make love with a succubus? To give your very existence over to her? 'What a way to go'? Yes, it is quite a way to go: terrifying, absolute, and final. So this is what oblivion is like, then.

* * *

We made love.

And Bella wasn't a human any more, and her transformation had changed her, had given her the confidence that she hadn't had as a human.

"Bella," I gasped as I pulled my lips from her, "didn't you want to talk?"

"Talking's done; I want you. _Now!"_ Bella almost shouted, on top of me.

"But ..." I said, overwhelmed. It was like a switch had been thrown, and Bella had turned into this ravenous, sex-starved monster.

_"But what?"_ Bella snarled, then pleaded: "Rosalie, _please!"_

I looked up at my desperate Bella; blinked once, sympathetically, and said, quietly, "Okay."

Bella took several deep breaths, visibly trying to control herself. She leaned in but stopped an inch from my face.

"Kiss me, Rose," Bella asked, almost meekly.

I lifted my head from the blanket, and my lips touched her lips in a soft kiss.

"May I kiss you, my Rose?" Bella dared, so tentatively.

I nodded.

She wrapped my head in my arms, returning it to the blanket, and kissed me once, on the lips, then again, then again.

Then again.

_"Mmmmnnn!"_ she sighed.

And then I think we both lost all self-control, because I found my arms wrapping around her head, too, and we were kissing, rapid little kisses, then a little bit harder, then a little bit more desperate. Cold, smooth, stone lips, met cold, smooth, stone lips in hard, needy, vampire kisses.

And then our lips locked, and her tongue darted out, probing, and then my own tongue met hers and our tongues were entwined, and we kissed a french kiss — a true french kiss — my tongue in her mouth and her tongue in mine.

And if felt so wonderful to feel her venom mingling with mine and feel her tongue in my mouth, a feeling I could never feel when she was a human, but now, her, fully my equal, no: fully _her!_ Now she could kiss me and not hold back. And she did, she kissed me fully, she kissed me so hard, she kissed me so deeply.

She pulled back.

_'Ahhhn?'_ A cry of surprise and desperate needing escaped my lips.

Bella's lips returned to mine for one, two, three quick kisses, then she sat up quickly, and _ripped_ the towel from my body.

She stared, her eyes filling with wonder as they raked over me.

_"God!"_ she gasped admiringly.

A glow suffused me, her eyes returned to mine, and it was hard to keep looking into her red-eyed gaze, seeing the strength and purity of her devotion to me.

I am admired; I always am. So I am more than used to it. But it is one thing to be admired, regarded, lusted after, by complete strangers — and I've even caught looks from family — but it's another thing entirely to see that admiration, that look of lust, and that adoration, in the eyes of the one who takes my breath away, from my lover, from my Bella.

Bella leaned down to kiss me again, and her own towel knot had loosened, so now her towel draped over the both of us ... her nipples lightly touched and then brushed against my own, sending a shock through my body. I felt Bella jerk a bit; I guess I wasn't the only one shocked.

I lifted my arms to embrace her, to prolong our kiss, but Bella slid her whole body down mine, and her lips were on my neck.

I hissed when I felt her lips on my neck, but then I felt her mouth open slightly and then her teeth ever-so-lightly grazed against my neck.

_"Ahhh!"_ I cried out as she pressed down a bit more on my neck and I felt her sucking on my neck. _God!_ The sensation was indescribably.

But then she slid even further down, peppering me with light kisses as she did.

And then she stopped.

_"Nmm?"_ I complained.

And then Bella chuckled, and I felt the breath of her laughter, right over my nipple.

That set me off. I arched my back to put the object she was teasing with her light breath into that naughty but o-so-pleasing mouth of hers. At the same time, she descended to my breast, pushing me back down onto the blanket with her mouth and her body pressed against mine. And then she latched on.

And she sucked.

_"Oh, God! Bella!"_ I cried in ecstasy. She was driving me right over the edge just with her kisses. And she knew it, the little minx, from my desperate cries. She giggled as she sucked, which sent wonderful and torturous vibrations through my whole body. This caused me to cry out again: _"Ahh!"_

The years we've been together and the (sadly, more) years we've been apart, Bella still was the only one who had my heart; and she still could drive me absolutely crazy with desire, just with her look, just with her touch.

Bella lifted her head, looking up at me. "My, my," she said teasingly, "somebody's a little bit desperate for it, aren't they?"

_A little bit?_ I thought indignantly. "Bella," I snarled, "shut up and have your way with me!"

My outburst seemed to please Bella no end, but she did return to her task. She kissed my nipple friskily, then immediately kissed at the base of my breast and then proceeded southward with sweet little pecks along the way.

"Bella," I demanded, "you'd better remember the other one when you come back up, or I'll have a bone to pick with you!"

After all, my breasts demand fair treatment and equal rights ... or, in this particular case: equal lefts, as that was the one she so cruelly ignored.

Bella ignored my warning with a dismissive and distracted, "Mmhm."

And then, she was there. She had slid all the way down, and her head floated between my thighs.

I was panting with anticipation.

"Well," Bella said, playfully curious, "what do we have here?"

I didn't need any more encouragement: I opened my thighs wide and arched my back, offering myself to her.

Bella looked awe-struck. "God, Rose," Bella said, and kissed my right inner thigh, then pulled back a bit, "you have the most beautiful pussy!" And as she said that, she kissed my left inner thigh.

I retorted jerkily, "I'm not so — _oh! God!" _I stuttered because Bella placed a light, quick kiss right on my pussy lips. I gulped and continued, "sure about that, Bella. _Ah!"_ I cried out again as I felt another kiss quick kiss on my labia.

Bella paused and looked up from me ... to look at me. "Oh," she asked, "so you've looking at other girls to get this comparison, have you?"

Her tone was teasing, but I heard jealousy in her voice as well, a seriousness.

I smiled warmly at her. "No, Bella," I said reassuringly, "only you, that's all the comparison I need: just you."

Her return smile was warm also, and so beautiful to see.

But then I glared. "But I'm not seeing what I want to see of you now!" I lamented.

Bella needed no further invitation. She cast aside her towel that was threatening to fall from her anyway, and did I ever get an eyeful of her lithe body.

Eye candy? I ate every inch of her with my hungry look.

But she didn't allow me to admire her for any length of time, because she quickly straddled my face and bent down over me, peppering my labia with quick kisses as she slid her hands beneath me, grabbing my cheeks.

Meanwhile, I looked up at my little Bella's sweet little kitty. The venom that had transformed her had completely healed the ravaging she suffered during her delivery, except for the scar of the 'c-section.' A 'vampire cesarean-section'? The cut from vampire teeth ripping into her was invisible to unobservant human eyes and livid and angry to mine. And beautiful. Bella was the only vampire with this mark ... well, I thought regretfully, the _second only_ vampire with this mark, and felt jealousy again toward Edward. How come he gets everything? First Bella and now his own mate, ... _and_ a family. After rejecting me? How is that fair?

I stopped myself. I got everything I wanted, too: first Bella, who is my own mate, and now a family. It's hard sometimes, and wonderful others, and just so amazing at all times, and I wouldn't trade it for anything, and I don't regret it, not anymore, not that I now I have my eternal Bella.

I brought my hands up and my fingers lightly traced her scar first, then my fingers went to her outer lips, brushing against them as I admired her tiny slit.

It was so the same, yet so different, from when Bella was human. Her lips no longer puffed with her desire, because, of course, there was no blood in her to cause this. But there was now no longer the dangerous pull of that blood that so made me want to kill her as I desired her so.

Now, I merely desired her, so it was desire, pure and simple.

But stroking the smoothness of her little kitty, I somehow missed the twinned desire. The monster in me that was a mortal danger to my human Bella was tamed, and I felt somehow sad that the pull wasn't something that was almost dangerously uncontrollable anymore.

But the desire for Bella was there — oh, yes, it was! — and I reached behind Bella, encircling her butt and pulled her down to my waiting mouth, kissing her kitty once, then opening her lips with mine and then I inserted my tongue into her little slit.

Bella gasped and her hands tightened their grip on my cheeks and her kisses when from pecks to licks and pokes with her demanding and impatient tongue.

Bella tasted different now that she was changed. The lavender and freesia that was impossible for a human to sense before was now very present in her scent. She didn't have human mucus anymore, she had venom, vampire venom, and as my tongue dipped in, it tasted her vampire essence both in her scent and in the venom.

But the venom burned my tongue, and as I swallowed, it burned my throat. I was used to this, this burn, but I was also very glad I had just hunted, as the blood that had just all-too-recently been pouring down my throat bound with Bella's venom and it felt like I was drinking champagne, peppery champagne, as I drank in Bella and it mixed with my meal.

Now I know why mated vampires are so sexually active right after a hunt. The blood stirs them up to a fever pitch and that same blood makes it so much easier to have intercourse.

Bella was really attacking my pussy with fervor, and I felt myself responding, I felt my own venom rush to my vagina, lubricating me for the assault of Bella's tongue that was providing plenty of lubrication already.

Bella was really ready for it, herself.

I could tell that from her own venom coming out of her little kitty. She wasn't coming yet, she wasn't even close, but she was raring to go. I moved my tongue up her slit and gently flicked her clit.

Bella groaned and redoubled her efforts on my vagina. She was a little too rough, but the feelings I had, feeling her desperation, made up for the sloppiness of her love-making. I was pushed a little further along by her groaning.

"Oh, Bella!" I sighed.

Okay, maybe I was pushed more than a little further along, so I pushed her right along, too. I took my middle finger, slid it along her slit, wetting it with her venom, and slid it right in.

_"Ah!"_ Bella cried, and she squeezed my finger, hard, and it took effort to slide my finger, in-and-out, in-and-out, of her hole as she gripped me. Good thing there was a lot of venom providing the necessary lubrication.

Bella lifted her head up and whined, "Come on, Rose. Come on, Rose. _Please!"_ and then burrowed back into my pussy, as if she were trying to push her whole head in there with the very firm grip on my buttocks and she shook her head from side-to-side rapidly, using her whole face to fuck me, her chin on my clit, her tongue in my hole, her nose near my anus, her hands pressing against me so hard!

I hummed in pleasure as I continued to work my finger into her and then I added a second finger, stroking more forcefully now. I was just so transported knowing that it was _I_ that had driven my in-control Bella totally wild with lust and desire.

"Uh!" Bella cried into my pussy, and then her muffled scream of, "Now, Rose, now!" right into me pushed me right over the edge.

I came.

It wasn't a mind-blowing cum; it was a nice cum, a sweet cum of me giving myself over to Bella.

But it was also just the beginning of my end.

Bella is a succubus, and she drew me right out of me in that sweet, nice cum. I felt myself being pulled into her, as I felt her pulling me into her, just sucking me, my being, along with my venom-cum.

And this sweet little cum was just the first orgasm. Once you start cumming, there's no stopping. With a succubus, you cum until you die.

Or until they let you stop cumming.

...

The first time Bella and I made love, we went right at each other, and she was a newborn, so she was so much more powerful than I was, and we suspected she had some talent, some gift, but we didn't know what it was.

We surely found out. Or I did.

And, well, we were so violent in our love-making, that first time. I didn't have to hold back anymore, and she surely didn't, so I came rather quickly. You know how it is, you just go right at your lover and you really let go.

And I did. And I kept ... letting go. I didn't stop. When I hit my first orgasm, I thought, _oh, goodness, this is what vampire-vampire sex is like._ It was wonderful! Sort of. It felt very ... strange; it felt like I was letting go, for the first time ever, and my whole body felt funny, as if ... well, you know when you go into shock and you can't feel your hands and your feet any more, then your legs and arms, and it feels so scary and you would be scared if you weren't so euphoric, so detached.

But then the second orgasm hit, then third, then the fourth. And I felt carried away by the multiple orgasms.

But then they just didn't stop. Orgasm after orgasm rolled over me. I felt something that a vampire normally doesn't feel: I was terrified as I felt myself slipping away ... into her. And then my vision started to tunnel, and I gasped out a scared _"Bella ..."_ and it came out as a whisper...

I think, out of all of us, Bella was the most scared. She realized she was doing something, so she stopped herself. But nothing came back to me: I saw everything in this brown-grey mist, and everything sounded far away, I couldn't move, and I felt absolutely nothing.

Bella was screaming her head off, and it sounded like she was a thousand miles away from me, and it took every vampire in the coven simply to contain her hysterics, for she was puzzlingly much, much stronger than what could be explained away by newborn strength. Carlisle examined me, but he was at a complete loss. After all: 'vampire medicine'? That had been a non-existent practice: vampires were fine, or hungry, or cinders. There was nothing like this.

Somebody got the idea to call the Denali coven, thankfully they had told us that succubae fed off vampires, too. And they knew exactly what the problem was: Bella is a succubus, and she had fed off of me. They also knew the cure. I needed to be nursed back to strength with blood.

Lots of blood.

...

Ever since then it was Bella who was the more powerful, and it was Bella who had to be careful with me. Talk about a complete role reversal! When she was human, I had to be oh-so-careful so not as to pulverize her frail human shell. Now that she is a newborn succubus, she had to be just as careful in her love-making with me, so that she didn't suck my very being out as she took me, over and over again.

And I found out in our love-making what it was to give yourself to your lover, completely. I never understood how Bella could do that as a human, just so completely surrender to me, or why. Now I knew how and why. It felt so amazingly incredible just to give myself over completely to Bella. I put my very existence into her hands, and this submission of myself, completely, to her, was paradoxically just so empowering. I had never been able to give myself completely to another being until now with Bella, and in so doing, I've never felt more cared for, more at peace.

So when the orgasm hit, although it was a light one, I thrust my hips up, hard, right into Bella's face. And I felt her take me. Oh, God, did she take me! And today she was greedy and needy, my Bella was, I came, then I came, and then I came again.

And that was the beginning of the end. Because, for whatever reason, when I gave up myself completely to Bella, Bella also lost all control. For what I gave, she took.

A very powerful, terrifying orgasm rocked me to my core.

"WHAA!" I screamed. I had wanted to call out my safe word, that we found we had to establish after that first incident, I had wanted to scream out 'White!' But the orgasm was so powerful, it tore the breath from my lungs and all coherent thought from my mind.

I had pushed Bella too far today, demanded too much from her to be with us. I was clingy, and that got my flighty-little-bird Bella scared. And horny. And so the tight control she had maintained over herself was gone, overcome by her desperation. I was clinging so hard to her that she was scared that she had to rip herself away from me, forever.

I pitied Bella as I felt myself being drained into her. As orgasm after orgasm ripped through me, destroying all sensible thought, and her _ardeur_ sucked the very being out of me, I felt sorry for her: she felt so trapped, she couldn't control her instinct to flee, to protect herself, ... by destroying me.

There is a risk of giving yourself completely to another, and that risk is: she make take you. All of you.

Blackness surrounded me. I saw nothing. Felt nothing.

Was nothing.

_Is this what oblivion is, then?_ I wondered in the nothingness.

No, I realized, for if it were, I wouldn't be thinking now.

And that's when I realized I was being offered a choice. I could now choose to embrace this nothingness, to give up this eternal existence of want and suffering.

And I could choose that right now.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

[1] Okay, so, this is the 75% mark that I mentioned in my notes at the first chapter of this story. This is 75% of chapter one of the one-shot (two-shot, whatevs-shot) _Bloodbuzz._ This is where Bella has to deal with the consequences of her choice to run away, and how that destroys those who love her. And this is where Rosalie has to deal with her choice of letting go. "'phfina, you say 'letting go'?" Yes. What has Rosalie wanted for the last 80 years? To not be a vampire any more. To be pushing up daisies in Rochester, NY, not to be a blood-thirsty creature, just going on in her dreary existence. Oblivion? Not having to go on anymore? Not having to think or to care?

Isn't the choice obvious?

Or am I projecting myself too much on Rosalie in this choice? Or perhaps in this whole fic? Well, if I am, then her choice is _really_ obvious, isn't it, m'dears?

[2] Okay, so, you may have a lot of questions. Who is Ren the child of? How is Edward involved? etc. I'm not answering them. On purpose. This fic's _sine qua non_ is to ask the questions. And you, I'm afraid, are to live in the agony of these unanswered questions. But isn't that life? I mean, all questions are answered (or are no longer asked, same thing) when you're dead. Another point for oblivion for Rosalie. So, while we are alive, we are full of uncertainty. We are full of living the questions. And that's hard. This fic answers some questions ... but only eventually. Be with that experience. Be with living those unanswered questions, and then be with living with new questions that seem not to have answers.

That's being alive. Living the questions. And maybe providing your own answers. And maybe celebrating or commiserating with the answers life provides for us.

I don't think I've promised anywhere that this fic would be an easy read.

"But is it a rewarding one, 'phfina?"

Hm. That sounds like a question to me. Well, you answer that. Is your life rewarding? If so, great. If not, you _know_ what to do. I sure do. Where I'm unhappy, I _know_ whose fault that is, and who I look to to fix that unhappiness.

Is this fic a rewarding read? Live that question as you read it. That's all I can say for now. And then you tell me after you read the words: "The End."

Those words are coming ... at the end of the "next" "chapter." (*sigh* 'phfina and her mega-super-long-multi-chapter chapters!)


	6. Mommy?

**Chapter summary:** Okay, so I'm not "dead." I suppose that could be construed as good news. But that look on Renesmee's face? I am so not looking forward to this Mother-daughter talk.

* * *

_Silence._

_Nothingness._

_Peace._

That is how this is, this nothingness. Just me and my thoughts as my companions. But this couldn't be correct, for oblivion is where everything is annihilated, so how could there be 'me' and 'my thoughts' in nothingness? 'Me' and 'my thoughts' are somethings; there can't be somethings in nothing.

Perhaps I was holding onto these somethings? Perhaps I had to let them go?

But ... was this a test? Which one to let go first? If I let go of my thoughts, would I be able any more to decide to let go of 'me'? Would my ego be 'unletgoable' without my thoughts to direct this release? After all, the self is really the only thing we have, the only unassailable thing. I could stop thinking about one thing or another, but could I stop 'meing'? Could I stop being?

Letting go of myself would be the harder of the two.

Okay. Do the hardest one first.

Time to let go of myself.

But.

But if I let go of myself, how would Ren go on? Without her parents? Bella had, after all, abandoned her in her infancy. And now, me, leaving her?

That would be a blow. Perhaps an irrecoverable one.

But I had lost my parents. I had continued on after they 'left' me by dying. Ren was strong, _and_ she had a loving extended family that would be there for her, always. I never had that.

Ren could continue without me. It hurt me to think that, because I love her so much, and she loves me, too. But she could continue on without me.

But Bella.

Bella would blame herself if I gave up on myself now. This is my choice, a choice I want, but I can't communicate that to her, being all alone in this void. I would make this choice, but all Bella would see is that there was animation in the stone shell that was my physical presence, and then there would be just a statue, with no me left, and she would blame herself.

And, knowing Bella, blaming herself thus, already in the pit of near black despair, that would be enough to tip her over the edge. And she's already been to Italy. She's already seen how to get the Volturi to act. Would she commit suicide to punish herself for a crime she was a helpless (albeit active) participant in?

I really didn't have to answer that question.

If I let myself go now, it would destroy Bella, and it would probably — no, definitely — forever darken Ren's future.

I didn't know that sighs could exist in oblivion, but my thought of resignation was clearly that.

I mean if it were solely up to me, I would not hesitate: freedom from this eternal struggle, the constant bickering, the endless thirst? I would take that in a heartbeat if I had a heart that did, in fact, beat. But now I have responsibilities, and I have to consider the impacts of what I do has on the ones I love.

Love is a many splendored thing. And such a pain in the ass.

And wouldn't you know it, at the moment of my decision, I felt a ... pull.

It wasn't really a feeling, either; that's inaccurate. It was more of an awareness. It was an outline, and the outline encompassed me, and the outline was that of my body. It was enclosing, constraining, this outline.

But then I did feel something. I felt lips, softly pressing against the outline of my lips, and then I felt something wet and hot trickle into the outline of my mouth.

Hearing returned to me, ever so slightly, in the nothingness of me and my outline.

I heard snatches of something coming to me in non-sound sounds, like thoughts, like concepts or ideas that were broken mid-thought.

The somethings I heard were: "Rosa-... stay w-... me."

They were warm, concerned, loving.

The outline that were my lips felt lips press against them, and then the wet warm something that I now identified as liquid trickled into my mouth again.

This process repeated itself, over and over again. Ten times. Twenty times.

Then the thoughts started having sounds associated with them.

"Rosalie," Bella's voice said, "you have to swallow. Try to swallow."

I knew the words meant something, but I just didn't know what.

I was, after all, too fascinated by what was happening to me. It wasn't painful, but it was ... odd. I felt myself beginning to merge with the outline of myself. It felt very constraining. When you are nothing, then you are also, at the same time, everything ... that is, in nothingness, you fill the whole emptiness, but now I felt my being, that had been infinite being bound into that tiny little frame of five feet eight inches of body. When you are infinite, this binding felt I was being crammed into a speck. It wasn't painful, but it was very, very confining.

I also felt more now.

The liquid? I identified it. It was blood. But it just stayed in my mouth. My cotton mouth. So I felt Bella sealing her lips over my lips and pushing the blood down my throat with a slow, steady but forceful exhalation. And I did feel it going down my throat, but I was just this inert statue; I had no power of my own to absorb the blood. My body was totally nonfunctional. But Bella's wasn't. I felt her venom going down my throat with the blood, and I felt her venom binding with the blood, releasing the life in the blood into my physical form. It was Bella's venom and the blood she was force-feeding me that was bringing me back, inch by inch, from oblivion.

I hope to God it wasn't human blood.

My being reached up to the outline of my eyelids and pried them open.

It was so, so odd, looking at my eyes from the inside and then looking through them to see the outside world. My eyes, in this moment, were truly windows and I looked out through them.

These eyes were near-useless, however. Everything was unfocused.

A vampire needing glasses? Emmett would have no end of fun with this one.

But I could see the foggy form of Bella. The brown and white blob that was her head was buried into a not-so-big brown fuzzy quivering something, then her head pulled away and swam closer to 'me.' Her cheeks were puffed until my vision was obscured and I felt her lips press against my lips and I felt the liquid go in as she forcefully expelled it into my mouth.

Bella was giving me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, vampire style.

She pulled back from my mouth, and looked at me.

Because ... I was me again. I felt myself in my body; my body and I were one again.

"Hi," she said, relief wreathing her voice.

I tried to blink. I tried to focus.

That appeared a bit hard at the moment, although I did bring Bella into sharper relief from the backdrop of the darkening sky.

She was holding a coyote, spasming in its death throes.

Coyote? _Ick!_ Good thing my sense of taste hadn't yet returned.

"Can you ..." she began as she extended the coyote toward my mouth.

And that's when she stiffened, as if shot.

Three things happened so quickly together it was almost if they all happened at once. These three things were sounds that I heard.

The first sound was a little thrumming of a hummingbird of a heartbeat.

The next sound was that of a young girl's voice gasping out a shocked _"Moh-mmy?"_

And not just any young girl's voice. It was the voice of _my_ young girl: it was Ren's voice.

And the third sound was Bella's muttered _"Shit!"_

And then I saw it all happen. Bella dropped the coyote on me and took off like a shot, pushing against me so hard that my body rolled around in a three-quarter turn, so that I was looking out toward where she had launched herself.

And that was right into the Harsha, like a shot. Me beating her into the lake for our bath? I now saw she let me win, because she simply blurred into an arc that terminated at an explosion of water as Bella's naked body _smacked_ onto the water ... and skipped along the surface. She was 'swimming' so hard and so fast that she was hydroplaning, 'veeing' through the water, leaving a wake churning the water behind her as she sped away from the scene like a rocket.

If Bella were a rocket, Ren was a banshee. I couldn't see her yet, but she screamed inarticulately and I heard her feet pounding the forest floor as she ran right past me and dived into the water in fast pursuit.

_Splash!_ In she went, and even before she broke back to the surface, she was already kicking hard and her arms were two pinwheels in a crawl so fast she would have been guaranteed a gold medal at the Olympics. I looked at my Ren through unfocused eyes, so proud of her speed, strength and beauty.

But Ren's speed was nothing next to Bella's. She had too many disadvantages: Ren has a circulatory system, and that system needs air. Even before she was halfway across the lake, she was turning her head to the side every ten or so strokes to catch a breath of air.

Each gulp cost her some speed and some distance.

And she had quite a bit of drag: she was wearing clothes, Bella wasn't, and the water pulled at the cotton, and she could not power through the drag. It slowed Ren down at each stroke.

About a minute later, Ren was half-way across, but Bella was already on the opposite shore, a mile away, leaping up into the trees, hopping from trunk to trunk, disappearing into the forest of the East Fork State Park.

It took another two minutes for Ren to reach the far shore. Her humanity showed, for she looked exhausted when she dragged herself out of the water. She stood on the far shore, visibly panting while her head slowly panned in a wide arc looking for any sign of her mother.

She stood there facing away from me in the last direction Bella had gone two minutes ago, or, for Bella, a year ago. Bella was that fast. Ren just stood there, so torn, so despondently, and then she threw her head back and wailed.

_"Mo-o-o-o-o-o-mmm-y-y-y-y-y-y!"_

Ren stood stock-still, waiting. A minute passed. Then another.

Then another.

Her shoulders slumped in defeat. She turned and looked across the mile of the water at me.

Then she turned away from me again, fell to the ground, and did something that no vampire could: she cried.

She huddled into a ball on the far shore of the Harsha, and she bawled, crying, then wailing, then screaming, ... then keening.

Then the silent screams came, where she was crying so hard she couldn't even breathe; she couldn't even make a sound to express her sadness.

I looked out across the water, my heart breaking as could do nothing to comfort her. I so wanted to hold her in my arms as she cried, but I couldn't even move my arms to even drag my body an inch closer to her.

All I could do is to watch her anguish through my misty, unfocused eyes as the darkness descended on us.

...

Eventually her sobs turned to gasps, and those turned to sighs.

And then she was quiet, and still. And she remained thus for at least a half hour, lying on the far shore, on the sand and pebbles, facing away from me, just breathing quietly.

She got up. She didn't turn toward me. She looked along the shore, first one way, then another, then shambled, head down, along the shore.

It took more than two hours for her to reach me. I felt her approach me through the vibrations in the ground.

She grabbed my shoulder and rolled me onto my back.

The look in her blood-shot eyes ...

It was furious and ... crazed.

I saw in there a rage.

But then, after a minute of her just glaring at me, she looked away.

She left my side to retrieve the picnic blanket and covered me with it, not looking at me the whole time.

Oh, yes. That's right: I'm naked.

When I was covered, she sat down by my head, indian style.

"Mom?" she asked.

I looked up at her. _God!_ I couldn't help but think. _She is so beautiful!_ Even unfocused I could see her beauty, even in her anger, even in her fury, even in her soaked blue jeans and dripping brown sweater ... even in her care.

_God! She is so like her mother!_ I thought with a pang.

Her look that had been concerned became even more so.

"Can you hear me?" she asked.

With effort, I blinked my eyes.

Ren sat for a moment by my side, and her thoughtful look became angrier and angrier.

Finally she hissed, "Did _she_ do this to you?" And, as she said this, she gesticulated angrily across the Harsha.

I cleared my throat. The effort that took almost hurt. I sighed out "Blah-h-h-h-h..."

_Blood._

"Oh!" Ren gasped, realizing my need. "Um, ah ..." she paused indecisively, then looked down at the drained coyote.

_"Ewww, gross!"_ she exclaimed with disgust, as only a pre-teen girl can. She waved her hand in front of her face to emphasize her point as she fanned away the mostly imaginary stench of the animal, and then picked up the carcass by the tail between her thumb and index finger and cast it, daintily, far into the forest.

She thought quietly for a moment, then her face filled with purpose.

"Stay right here!" she commanded authoritatively, waving an imperious index finger at me.

As if I were going anywhere. I tried to smile in acknowledgment, but Ren was already on the move, disappearing into the forest.

...

She came back about a half an hour later, easily dragging a struggling whitetail by the neck. When she reached me, she broke the front two legs of the animal as easily as if they were dried kindling, forcing the deer to bow down to my head.

But I couldn't lift my head to the neck of the animal, and I could barely open my mouth.

Ren shook her head, grimacing, and then with a quick, efficient swipe, ripped open the deer's throat. Blood poured over my face and onto the blanket, creating an awful mess.

But some of it went in. And I could swallow a tiny sip of that.

And soon I was gulping.

Then I was drinking, greedily.

My arms embraced the dying animal as I lifted my head to its neck, attached my mouth to its severed vein, and I sucked for all I was worth.

...

It took five deer to restore me. Five. Usually I could take a deer or two every couple of weeks, but it took me two deer — that first one Ren brought and then another one — to get me back on my feet and walking, then a third for me to be able to run, and two more to get me to vampire speed.

After the second deer, I dressed myself. That was painful. Not physically so, but, you see, I had brought myself a change of clothes — sex with Bella can lead to torn up scenery and shredded clothing — but I had also brought her some clothes, too. Nothing fancy, not a ballroom gown or anything of the sort, but also not a flannel shirt, either. Just nice, practical clothes for her to wear and feel like more than just an animal. Looking at the clothes I had set aside for Bella as I put on my own change of clothes, I felt a pang of sadness.

Okay, it was, indeed, physically painful, the hurt I felt, knowing that Bella had run from all help and would now, probably right this very moment, be murdering again, just to dress herself.

I cannot dwell on this, however. What has happened, has happened, and now I have to restore myself and then deal with the consequences.

As I hunted, Ren was by my side the whole time, shadowing me. But she was silent, not looking at me. She took down a deer for herself, but besides that, she could have been my shadow.

When I finally felt my power restored and coursing through me from my extended hunt, when I finally finished off that last deer, I turned to business at hand.

I looked at Renesmee, and looked upon Beauty.

I _had been_ the most beautiful woman in the world, but that was before. Ren was just a pre-teen, but her body was beginning to fill out and she was growing into a woman.

Her first period was quite the adventure in a house full of vampires ... and medical doctors just dying (figuratively) to know if she were a mule or if she, too, had a working reproductive system that she inherited from her human nature.

I think she was close onto dying, literally, herself when she came downstairs that morning, a full blush in her cheeks, pad in place, to see more than polite interest on every face of her relations.

And with her cycle, her body began to become the woman that she will be.

As if she wouldn't slay everyone with her looks now: long, straight blond hair with a slight wave and curling at the tips, steel blue eyes, a pale heart-shaped face with the slightest blush of pink to it.

There was no doubt about it: Renesmee was her mothers' daughter ... both of them. She took the physical traits from both Bella and myself, but she also acted so much like me, so strong and sure and determined, and so like Bella, her absent mother, so caring and loving.

Ren is ... Ren is perfect.

And smart.

"How did you know Bell-..." I said, then corrected myself, "... your mother would be here?"

Ren rolled her eyes. "Oh, really, Mom! What do you take me for?" she demanded angrily. "What did you take us all for? 'I hunt alone'? _Please! _And then you come back all smelling of another vampire, and the same vampire at that, after most the hunts? And what scent was that? Did you think it would wash off or be hidden by that lavender-scented soap? Or covered by the strawberry-scented shampoo? As if anything could hide that scent of lavender and freesia! Did you expect me to forget the first smell I ever smelled? Did you? What do you take me as? Stupid?"

"Honey," I said, "no, of course not! I just ..."

"You just thought you hide the most important part of my life away from me forever, right?" she broke in angrily, then demanded: _"Why?"_

I looked away from Ren's furious stare.

After a moment I looked back at Ren. She was quiet.

And sad.

She looked away from me and whispered sadly: "She hates me."

I drew in a shocked breath. "Ren," I exclaimed, "that's not true. Don't say that! How could you think that?"

"You heard her," she whispered fiercely. "You heard what she said when she saw me. She can't stand me. _She __hates_ _me. _And then, as soon as she saw me, she ran away from me as fast as she could."

Two tears raced down Ren's cheeks.

I closed the distance between us and wrapped her in my embrace. Instead of fighting me or pulling away, she rested her forehead on my shoulder as she blubbered. She occasionally cried out, 'She hates me!' despondently as I held her and rocked her and hummed and shushed and sang to my Ren.

After a time she stopped crying again. I continued to embrace her as she held onto me, her head buried in my chest.

"Ren," I essayed quietly, "she doesn't hate you at all. Try to ... try to think about it from her position, sweetie. Bella, ... well, your mother, she really is afraid for you, and she doesn't want to ..."

"I don't want to think! And I don't want to hear that!" Renesmee sniffled petulantly. "I just want her home. I want her with me. That's all."

Then she sighed so deeply that I felt it through her whole body: "I want my mommy back."

I sighed in sympathy. "I know, honey," I said quietly, then repeated: "I know."

_"Good!"_ Ren said firmly.

I paused for a moment. "'Good'?" I queried.

"Yeah, good," Renesmee stated forcefully. "I'm glad you know that, 'cause I'm coming with you on your next hunt."

I stopped rocking her. "To what end?" I asked cautiously.

"To bring Mom home," she stated with conviction.

"Honey," I said gently, "I don't think that's such a good idea. You see, ..."

Renesmee pulled back and looked me in the eye.

"Mom," she said clearly, "I'm sorry, but I don't care what you think. I'm coming with next time, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

Did I mention how strong-willed our daughter is?

And wasn't it so that I had wished earlier today to see Bella and Renesmee reunited?

The fierce look in my daughter's eye told me I was going to get that wish granted.

* * *

**Chapter end notes:**

[1] So, yes, Renesmee is Rosalie's and Bella's daughter. But no, this story is not about that. That story will be told in my to-be-written story _Spring Break,_ the sequel to my story _Christmas Surprises._


	7. A Plea

**Chapter summary:** You think that you have your concerns. And then ... nothing matters and you realize, too late, what you did have, and then it's gone. It's all gone. And there's nothing you can do, except watch her die right before your eyes. And hold her. And love her. Helplessly. Incidentally, Carlisle will be so pleased to know my prayer life has improved. Oh, look, I, Rosalie Lillian Hale, just told a joke. Hurray.

* * *

"Bella," I called out into the emptiness of the forest surrounding the Harsha Lake.

The emptiness responded with a reproachful silence.

"Bella," I tried again, "Ren is dying. Your daughter, she's dying."

The silence was now filled with shock and disbelief, and mistrust, and, yes, hatred.

Bella was here. I could feel it.

Or … and looking back at this last month and a half, maybe it was just my own desperate hope that she would be here, to hear this message, to save the day, to make it right.

Mothers made things right for their children, didn't they? I mean, I had surely failed at that, and miserably so, just so helplessly watching Ren deteriorate right in front of my eyes. Right in front of all our eyes.

And my own mother? …

Well, _in general, _mothers made everything right for their children. They didn't leave their children to be raped and murdered by their fiancés. They didn't leave their children to die.

Bella wouldn't do that.

But Bella was gone. Bella was gone this last month and a half, and if the Volturi with their infallible tracker Demetri couldn't find Bella, how in the world could we — could I — possibly locate her if she didn't wish to be located.

And her last communication with me made it very clear that she didn't wish to be located.

"Bella," I called one more time, and waited, hoping, hoping against hope that she would respond, that she would magically appear out of the thin air, as she does now.

Nothing.

I sighed in defeat, and lifted the boulder with Bella's scent still so strongly embedded into it, glanced at the words carved into the stone by her fingers, burned into my retinae forever, and placed Carlisle's medical report folded up into a business-sized envelop with the name 'Bella Swan' written on the outside. The envelop was sealed in a plastic bag.

The medical report indicated Ren's heart rate was just below fifty beats per minute, where her normal heart rate had been ninety beats per minute, and … she was succumbing to arrhythmias.

It would be today that she would die. Or if we were very, very lucky, it would be tomorrow morning.

Maybe.

I shook my head at the impossibility of it. Ren was starving herself to death. Yes, she wasn't an immortal child, so did that make her mortal?

Unfortunately, the overwhelming evidence was pointing at that very bleak possibility.

And no amount of pleading, nor cajoling, nor love on my part nor on the part of the family would make her rise from her bed, nor move, nor face us, nor release that death grip she had on her pillow, and we just watched her, helplessly, turn sallow and gaunt.

And we heard her heart rate, these last few days, slow.

And they she did something today that terrified me: she sighed and she smiled, and she hugged her pillow and whispered the first word in more than a month: 'Mommy.'

And so I was here in this forest again, where Ren and I had come a month ago at Ren's ... _insistence, _and had found not Bella waiting for us, but this boulder, beneath which was a particular message for me that I thank God that I lifted the boulder away from Ren's sight so she could not see the _hate_ scratched into the rock with every letter of Bella's message, and an envelop with Ren's name written in Bella's chicken scratch: "Renesmee Carlie Cullen."

I wanted Ren to have Bella's name: Swan. Bella wanted her to have mine. I insisted she was her baby: Bella birthed her. She insisted she was mine. For, as Bella pointed out with more than a bit of glee, I was after all, God help me, the 'father.' We wouldn't compromise, so Bella finally proposed she be named 'Cullen' after her (non-)Grandparents, after the family she belongs to. That made the most sense to Bella, she had said reasonably, the last name is the family name, and Renesmee was in the Cullen family.

This, of course, pleased the Cullens no end. Alice was particularly annoyingly radiantly cheerful about that option, and Esmé? 'Grandma' Esmé? God! Please don't remind me! So I caved under the combined weight of Bella's and everybody elses' wishes.

I never learned what the letter said that Bella had written to her daughter, for Ren took the envelop from me, and didn't open it until we got home, after not hunting, and she went straight to her room and closed her door.

We all heard her carefully tear open the envelop. Then we heard her gasp.

And then it was quiet for a few moments.

And then we heard her eat the paper: the letter and the envelop.

And that was the last sound we heard from her. Until today.

Carlisle had wanted, after a couple of weeks, that is: after a month of Ren not eating, … well, he suggested we try force-feeding her something, some blood, some human food, something, anything.

But Carlisle had a medical education that predated the Civil War, and the Revolutionary War, and although he tried to keep up, he hadn't received the medical education his wife and children had. He didn't know that attempts at force-feeding resulted in death. And if the patient did survive the experience, the experience in and of itself was comparable to rape. What? How would her jaw be forced open? Who would break it? Who would bite it off? Moreover: this? at the hands of her own family members?

No. I would _not_ allow _my daughter_ to go through that experience that would scar her forever.

I knew: I carry these eternal scars myself, and I … informed him of this, and my views of what he could do with his helpful suggestions.

Carlisle looked contrite and Esmé, furious (in that Esmé way of being furious with her 'children' which was more reproachful than angry).

Me, I had no sympathy to spare on them: my daughter was dying, and I got from them suggestions on how to kill her faster or damage her psyche eternally?

So I did what I could. I did what a mother would. What I would want my mother to do to me and for me. I stayed by her side, there for her, but not bugging her … not too much, anyway, just being there for her, loving her, protecting her from the world and instantly ready to do anything and everything for her if she so much as hinted at anything.

So I stood, and sat, by a stone, loving her, watching her die, watching her kill herself, and not being able to do a God-damned thing about it.

Until now.

And here I was in the Hasha parkland doing the only thing I could do.

... which was nothing.

I watched another moment, _willing_ Bella to materialize.

Nothing did. I sighed, turned back toward home.

Then turned right back to face the Harsha.

"Bella," I called, "please."

And waited.

Nothing.

I shook my head. From the past, it would be at least another two weeks before Bella let go of her anger for me, and judging from what was written underneath the boulder, much, much longer than that.

I mean, words like 'I can't believe _you_ would sink so low as this! Using my own daughter against me? I never want to see you again!' And then there was a whole line that was scratched, no, clawed right out of the rock, as if she had written something, looked at it, and ripped it right out of the stone that she had gouged into the rock with her angry finger.

Bella coming back in weeks? That was optimistic ... months was standard Bella reparation time, but even that, now, was optimistic.

Months. By that time, Ren would be dead.

I left under the reproachful silence of the darkening forest.

...

"Ren," I called quietly as knocked at her bedroom door.

Nothing. Except — thank God! — the weak flutter of her heartbeat.

I let myself in, very quietly, and looked on her.

Horrifying.

I had seen her, over the instant of time these brief three years of her life had been begin to bud into womanhood, and I had been with her every day during these last six weeks as she had starved herself, and see her reverse that process. If I weren't fighting with every fiber of my being, _willing_ her to hang onto her existence, I would be scared out of my mind that she was causing permanent damage, stunting her growth like this.

But that was a trivial concern with what I saw.

What I beheld before me was a shadow of the daughter that I knew and loved. A skeleton.

... that I _know_ and _love._ I corrected myself angrily.

I sat beside her and rested my hand of her forehead.

If the starvation didn't kill her first, the fever might just finish the job.

She turned away from 'looking,' blankly, at the ceiling to face the wall, grasping her pillow in a fetal hug.

'Looking.' Her eyes had gone from a crystal blue to an angry red.

Her being was consuming her body from the inside out. It had consumed the fatty deposits all living beings have, then it attacked the pigmentation of her eyes, blinding her. And then ... and then ...

We actually heard the venom beginning to attack her brain cells, so rich in fat.

Ren was literally losing her mind.

"Sweetheart," I called softly and sweetly, and, hearing my own voice, I was appalled at the utter weakness and helplessness I couldn't hide behind me trying to sound strong and confident and caring.

"Sweetheart," I tried again, slightly more strongly, "I ... I went to the Harsha today, honey. Bella will be coming tomorrow, okay? Can you just hang on? Your ... your mommy will be coming tomorrow."

"You said that yesterday," the softest of whispers greeted my shocked ears. I heard the quiet, respectful movements of the vampires downstairs as the sound reached their ears, too.

These were the first words I had heard from Ren in weeks.

My heart dared to hope.

Stupid heart. If I had one beating, I would have crushed it for its foolish hope.

I tried to control the trembling excitement in my voice.

"I did," I admitted, "but this time I'm sure of it. She's coming, sweetheart; she's coming to see you."

"How do you ..." Ren began angrily, but then she started coughing, feebly, but those feeble coughs racked her delicate frame, and they didn't stop for a while.

Ren flopped supine on the bed. I took a tissue and very gentle wiped away the spittle from her mouth.

Ren mouthed the word, 'water,' and I stood to get her a glass when I felt a rush of air and a knock at the door.

Alice.

She carried a tall glass of ice water in a tray. I smelled the sour scent of the juice of lemon squeezed into the water. Yes, of course: citrus to counteract the scurvy marring my baby's soft skin.

Alice looked so funny, so odd, looking so serious, so unlike her usual self.

I smiled wanly at Alice, and made to take the glass.

Alice didn't give it to me, and she didn't leave. She even ignored my obvious death glare. She moved to Ren's side and propped up her head.

Ren shook it. Alice smiled in understanding and put her tiny index finger into the glass, wetting it, she moved her finger to Ren's mouth, wetting her lips.

Alice just loved to baby my baby.

"Tastes funny!" Ren complained faintly.

Alice smile didn't leave her face, nor alter an iota. She simply put the glass aside on the end table.

Ren's eyes narrowed suspiciously at her aunt.

Alice glanced at me then looked right at Ren.

"This is just so stupid," Alice said distinctly.

Ren closed her eyes.

"Alice," I began warningly.

Alice's eyes flashed to me. They said _shut up!_

Her eyes went back to Ren before my eyes could answer hers.

"Ren, really!" Alice continued angrily. "You think you're going to bring Bella back with this stupid little stunt? No! The only thing you're doing is hurting yourself, which you don't care about, I know, but you are _killing_ the rest of us! I mean, look at Rosalie! Do you know what's going to happen to her if you kill yourself doing this?"

"Alice, this isn't about me!" I shouted.

"_SHUT UP!" _Alice screeched back.

Ren's eyes snapped open in shock at her Aunt's scream. She glared angrily in Alice's direction.

Alice turned back to Ren.

"Do you think I don't know about what you're going through? That I don't know why you're doing this?" Alice snarled. "Well, let me tell you something, little girl! When we first got here, Jasper and I, Jasper _almost_ made a mistake, and he hated himself so much he left me, huh? You listening to me? And what did I do? I shut down, shut myself in my room and sang 'woe is me' for _a whole month_ putting everybody else through Hell. And what did it do?"

Alice waited a beat then screamed _"NOTHING!"_

Alice was panting with rage.

"Al ..." I began angrily.

Alice's black-black eyes flashed at me in fury.

She turned back to Ren. "The only thing," she continued angrily, "the only thing that made a difference was when Edward pulled me out of the bed and pulled me out of the house to go get Jasper back."

Alice breathed in angry gasps for a second.

"So get your sorry, bony butt out of this bed, get something in you and go out and go get your mother _RIGHT NOW!"_

It was quiet for a moment as the words washed over Ren.

Then she turned away from us again, grasping her pillow to herself.

Alice stood, rising inches from her sitting position and crossed her arms.

"Fine! _FINE!"_ She shouted rancorously. "Go ahead and have your pity party and kill yourself. You keep doing what you're doing and you'll succeed. I know. I've seen it. And you know what that will do to everybody? You know who's fault that will be?"

Alice leaned over Ren and whispered angrily: "Yours."

"Alice," I intervened, "thank you, that's quite enough!"

Alice glared at me then the looked back at Ren. Alice shook her head sadly.

"Yes," she whispered, "unfortunately ... it is."

Alice swept out of the room, a look of contempt for both me and Ren.

The very first thing I would do, after Ren's funeral, would be to tear Alice into tiny little bits. I might just bring matches; Jasper be hanged.

"I love you, too, sister dear," floated a sarcastic pixie's voice from downstairs.

Fucking seer and her fucking seeing my plans.

"Don't you think you went too hard on her, though, Alice?" Esmé's gentle concerned voice was slightly chiding.

Alice snorted in surprise. _"Excuse me? _And just standing around watching her kill herself is just _so much kinder!" _then she spit a spiteful: _"AND_ just so much more _useful!"_

"_Jasper!"_ came Alice's impatient authoritative bark, "I'm starving; let's get the hell out of here and hunt."

I heard the door open and close as Alice and her submissive puppy-dog mouse of a husband leave. Jasper was clearly cowed by mood he could feel pulsating from the little ball of black-haired and black-eyed hurricane of rage known as his wife.

I tsked. At least Emmett is his own man. He never let me walk all over him like that.

Well, not all the time, anyway.

I sighed and sat by Ren's side, resting my hand lightly on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, baby. Aunt Alice can be ... a little dramatic at times."

I felt Ren shrug. "Not like I don't deserve it," she whispered very softly.

"No, baby ..." I began.

"Mom," Ren stated clearly, "shush, huh?"

I felt my brow cloud and my mouth tighten into a frown. In my day, children did not upbraid their parents.

It took effort, but I swallowed my retort, took a second to collect myself, and asked tentatively, "Did you want to drink a little bit of water?"

Ren shook her head.

"Why not?" I demanded.

Ren shrugged. "Changed my mind," she whispered listlessly.

My eyes narrowed. She was dodging. I didn't allow this.

She must have felt my censure. So she eventually added, "and ..."

"And," she whispered more strongly, "I tasted the lemon. Trying to sneak in one little thing to make me all better. Trying to pretend that it's okay that everything is like it is, but it's not. Mommy's not here. Why eat? Why get better when it's not, and it never will be."

"Ren, that's ludicrous!" I exclaimed.

"No," she objected weakly, "it's not ludicrous; it's reality."

"No, Ren," I objected right back, "that's errant nonsense talking."

"Oh, yeah," Ren whispered defiantly, "how do you know?"

I closed my eyes, breathed in and out, and said quietly: "Because that's what I used to say all the time, so filled with hate and spite and self-loathing, and then ..." I paused.

"And then ... I let love come in," I said slowly, grudgingly, "and then I got the most precious gift in the world ... you, sweetheart."

_And please don't take that gift away from me, _I begged silently.

"Some gift," Ren whispered regretfully.

I sighed.

She was quiet for a moment, then asked with a distant curiosity, "How long did that take, for 'love to come in'?"

I smiled sadly and said, "Oh, about one hundred years."

My voice was laced with irony.

Ren thought about that for a moment and then nodded her head.

"You waited that long for her?" she asked quietly.

"Yes," I said, thinking of Bella, and how desperately hard I love her, even now.

"How?" Ren's voice interrupted my reminiscence.

My lips twisted into a wry smile. "The trick is to keep breathing."

It was quiet for a moment.

"The thing is ..." Ren said timorously, "I don't have that long. What did Grandpa say? Another four years and then ... what? It's over for me."

"Another four years and you stop growing, sweetheart, that's _all_ we've know," I countered vehemently, then added: "You could become immortal then."

"To face forever of what?" Ren asked. Then she whispered to herself: "Probably better that I'm gone anyway, freak of nature that I am."

"_Renesmee Carlie Cullen!"_ I barked angrily. "How dare you say that! That's entirely false!"

"Not human; not vampire," she moaned a whisper. "Not either." She said mournfully, and then repeated: "Not either."

"No, you're not," I affirmed. "You're the best of both!"

"Uh-huh," she sighed, hugging her pillow tighter to herself.

I clenched my teeth. She was entirely caught up in herself, and I wasn't getting through to her at all. If only she would open her blind eyes and see what she meant to me, what she meant to us all.

I collected myself. I picked up the water from the table and clinked the ice in the glass.

"Drink?" I asked softly.

Ren shook her head. "Not thirsty," she whispered.

Desperation crept into my voice: "Is there _anything _I can do for you?"

Ren swallowed nothing down her dried out throat. "Hold me?" she pleaded.

"Yes," I said firmly and quickly. I raced to my room and changed into my 'mommy-pajamas' that now gave me none of the shame and embarrassment I had felt when I first bought them after Bella had left us all and Ren in my care, then raced back to Ren's room and slid easily under the covers, spooning into Ren's frail form.

I felt Ren relaxing into sleep ... but then: "Will you tell Mommy something when you see her again?"

I tried, very hard, not to make grinding sounds as I clenched my teeth.

"You can tell her _yourself,"_ I snarled as calmly as I could manage.

"Uh-huh," Ren said dismissively.

We really needed to work on her respecting her parents. When she recovered — _when_ she recovered, I reemphasized — I would have to take her to task on this.

"Could you tell her that I love her? That I'll always love her, okay? And ..." she paused, breathing shallowly, and gulped again, "Auntie Alice was right, so tell her not to blame herself if she does, okay? It's not her fault: it's mine."

"Ren," I said shaking my head, "you are just so ..."

A long sigh, like the death rattle, escaped from her lips, shocking me into silence.

"Just so ti..." she whispered.

Then nothing, except for the _lug-dub, lug-dub, lug-dug_ of her laboring heart and the sometimes even, sometimes hitched breathing of my baby girl struggling in a restless sleep.

I held the furnace that was my little girl, so much hotter than Bella when she was human, and prayed with all my might as she slept that Bella would come tomorrow to find my baby — _her baby! _— still alive, still fighting for one more day of life.

Her little former-hummingbird heart gasped and sputtered throughout the night.

_Lug-dub. Lug-dub ... lug-dub. lug-dub._

_Bella, please God!_ I begged, _please just come, just get over your God-damn righteous anger and peek in on the hunting ground and see the note. _

_Please, _I prayed, _please come._

_... lug-dub._

_Foolish hearts, _I thought ruefully: mine for hoping, hers for beating on. I added another prayer, that Ren's foolish little heart would keep beating, and that tomorrow, there would be a reason for it to do so.

_

* * *

_

[1] The story _You've Kept Me Waiting_ by Mandi1 tells the story of Alice and Jasper from the beginning. It relates Alice's withdrawal when Jasper makes his mistake and runs away in shame in chapter 36 and on.

[2] I think one of the saddest stories I've read is my bb's, geophf's, one-shot _Reminiscence. _Unlike my _Fireworks, _his Rosalie doesn't get Bella back after losing her.

[3] The song "The trick is to keep breathing" by the band Garbage: another saddy. In fact, their entire album _Version 2.0_, when it's not snarling, is a heady brew of sadness.


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